


Better Run

by Aithilin



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, Gen, Nyx Ulric Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:40:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25934539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aithilin/pseuds/Aithilin
Summary: Nyx had learnt to keep his weapons close and to not let anything stand in his way.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 28





	Better Run

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted at my Tumblr

“Whatever doesn’t kill me…”

One of the first lessons he had received since leaving the devastation his hometown had become was to keep track of his weapons. More than once in crossing the porous border that separated Galahd from its ally in Lucis he had lost track of everything but his kukri. That he had clutched tightly to him in the dark of the growling night, when the ruins of an ancient civilization they were passing through was glowing red and dangerous. 

A bag of clothes had been lost between outposts in Galahd. A camp disrupted by patrolling MTs meant the loss of some fishing gear he had been using to feed him and his tiny remnants of family gathered close. Another bag had been confistacted at the Lucian border— food and foraged items that had sustained them on the trip— and deemed inadmissible by the indifferent Guards at the city gates waving Lucians through with truck loads of marked produce from local farms unfortunate enough to be outside of the Wall. 

But he had kept what was important to him. 

He had survived the journey so far. 

His father’s old weapon had been more than enough to start rebuilding his life. Or something like it. 

“Whatever doesn’t kill me…”

There was more than one mantra shared by the Glaive recruits. The orders that had been drilled into them— “For Hearth and Home”— was an old greeting from what seemed like every province and sovereign nation that had lost the protection of the Wall. It was a promise in tough times, a reminder of their place and purpose. A hope to return to whatever each of them considered home. 

Nyx had it engraved on the second kukri’s ornaments when it was forged in the armouries of the Kingsglaive after he had taken his oath to protect the Wall and obey the King of Lucis. It was there to remind him every time the little charm caught the light of the sun or one of Crowe’s firestorms; he would obey the order— the promise— to return home that his mother had given him, and that he had given her. 

When he no longer heard Selena’s voice ringing in his ears or in his blood filled dreams. 

“Whatever doesn’t kill me…”

He didn’t know when he had started hearing a different voice in place of Selena’s. 

He supposed it was when he started to really get good with the warping magic trick every Kingsglaive was expected to learn to some level. Pelna had talked about how he hated it— his soul was being pulled from his body and suddenly shoved back in— and Libertus had never really stomached it. Luche was the one with the medical knowledge; he had told them they actually died in that moment, all of that power from the King separating them in every way possible. 

It had been why some recruits who couldn’t handle it just crashed through that Crystalline barrier in a heap of lifeless burning flesh and broken bone. 

Nyx had been among the voices telling Luche to shut up about it. 

But the trick had yet to kill them. 

Maybe.

“Whatever doesn’t kill me…”

The woman he had started to see in his dreams resembled the statue at the Citadel gates and on the few Royal Tombs he had seen. She resembled the statue outside their headquarters— the skeletal face shrouded by a beautiful mask— like some memento mori in the midst of the bright Lucian jewel of a city. He had seen her likeness in the shadows of the Citadel, in paintings in the quiet places where life was a touch too vibrant for the Lucian sensibilities. 

He’s not sure when he started to dream of the goddess Etro and of a Solheim temple near the rocky, ashen foothills of Ravatogh. 

He’s not sure when he started to see her face flashing before him as he warped in the heat of a battle, as his weapons found their mark time and again in the flanks of daemonic beasts and mechanical soldiers. He’s not sure when her voice merged with Selena’s and it became more of a comfort to him in the end. 

He’s not sure when all of this started, but at the end of it all, when the world had been blazing and the pain tearing through him as much as the borrowed magic, he had been grateful to see something other than his sister’s final moments in his mind. 

“Whatever doesn’t kill me…”

Nyx rose from the rubble with a coldness he didn’t think was possible. With a stillness that made him wonder if this was really his grave. Or his afterlife. 

When he had retrieved his weapons from the heap of flesh and bone and daemon armour that had been his mentor when Selena’s voice and a promise to his mother was all that had driven him forward. 

He could see, in the glaring light of a new dawn over the city, that there were enemies stalking the streets. 

Nyx gripped his weapons tighter.

“…had better run.”


End file.
